Wednesday, June 24, 2009

David Miller Directs his Frustration at the Everyday Taxpayer

There will be no mercy for Torontonians who dump their garbage illegally, not even for those who face long delays at drop-off points blocked by unionized workers in a strike that threatens to continue through the sweltering days ahead.

“It's becoming clear there is a small group of people who are taking advantage of this strike to use Toronto as their personal dumping ground,” Mayor David Miller said at his first major news conference since 24,000 inside and outside workers walked off the job early Monday.

“We will not tolerate this kind of activity,” he said, warning of fines that start at $380 and could rise as high as $50,000.

So let me get this straight. You're the Mayor of the largest city in the country. You've had a couple of years to negotiate a new contract with your trash collectors and didn't care enough to do it in a timely fashion. Those same workers go on strike and picket all your trash transfer joints and threaten and intimidate everyday, responsible taxpayers that try to drop off their trash at those same transfer stations.

I don't think you understand that being on a line is a rather frightening experience at times. When you've seen people spat on, attacked with hammers, struck by cars (all things that happened on the CUPE 2278 lines in 2001), you get more than a little worried for your own safety, and band together to prevent something from happening. There's already been one incident of a worker being struck by a car on the lines, so I take the fear as pretty legitimate.

Yeah, and who gives a shit about the 72 year old guy with a heart condition, and a minute pension that sits in a car surrounded by men half his age who are arguing for cumulative sick days and is terrified out of his mind?

Again, you wanna block scab workers go ahead. Everday Joe's trying to be good citizens should be exempt from the swarming. Sorry, but you're quickly losing my sympathy!

Anywho, the point of this post is that the Mayor of Toronto is a dispicable human being for sending his by-law guys out to ticket individuals who are trying to dump their garbage legally at transfer stations. A dispicable human being for penalizing the people of Toronto for his sub-standard ability to solve a labour matter years in the making.

Somehow that has now morphed into my opinion of CUPE workers in the city of Toronto and their right to picket.

...Just check out the so-called "Sunshine list" of municipal government employees who last year earned more than $100,000. They sure aren't the guys collecting the garbage or cleaning the streets, but rather the dozens of folks it seems are required to manage them.

On the 2007 list, for example, I counted four "repair supervisors" earning between $168,000 and $191,102 a year, and three street-cleaning supervisors earning about the same.

In the words of my friend Tracy Nesdoly, whom I quote several times a year saying this, "You have to know who to be mad at." And in this case, it isn't the workers...